Category Archives: Transhuman News

The biggest-ever trawl of the human genome for cancer-causing DNA errors has netted more than 80 tiny mutations, a finding that could help people at high risk, researchers say.

The results, which double the number of known genetic alterations linked to breast, ovarian and prostate cancer, were unveiled in a dozen scientific papers published in journals in Europe and the United States.

The three hormone-related cancers are diagnosed in over 2.5 million people every year and kill one in three patients, said a Nature press statement.

Teams from more than 100 research institutes in Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States said the work should in the future help doctors to calculate an individual's cancer risk long before any symptoms emerge.

People with high-susceptibility mutations could be counselled against lifestyle choices that further increase their risk, given regular screening and drug treatment, or even preventative surgery.

"We have examined 200,000 areas of the genome in 250,000 individuals. There is no (other) study of cancer of this size," Per Hall, coordinator of the Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study (COGS), told AFP of the research.

The studies compared the DNA of more than 100,000 patients with breast, ovarian and prostate cancer to that of an equal number of healthy individuals. Most were of European ancestry.

Everyone has inherited alterations in their DNA, but whether these mutations are dangerous or not is determined by where on the code they lie.

And carrying a mutation does not necessarily mean a person will develop cancer, a disease that may have multiple causes.

The researchers said further study is needed to allow scientists to translate these DNA telltales into tests for predicting cancer risk. A more distant goal is using the knowledge for better treatments.

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DNA testing to identify cancer risk

DNA vs K-SHINE TRAILER (FULL BATTLE 3-31-13)
SMACK/ URL does it again with another crazy battle between DNA K-Shine. This battle drops March 31st Easter Sunday at 4PM. Log on to http://www.urltv.tv and subsc...

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DNA vs K-SHINE TRAILER (FULL BATTLE 3-31-13) - Video

Brain activity from experiences as common as exploring new locations surprisingly damages the noggin's DNA, hinting that such disruptions may be a key part of thinking, learning and memory, researchers say.

This damage normally heals rapidly, but abnormal proteins seen in Alzheimer's disease can increase this damage further, perhaps overwhelming the ability of brain cells to heal it. Further research into preventing this damage might help treat brain disorders, scientists added.

Explorer mice

Scientists analyzed young adult mice after they were placed into new, larger cages with different toys and odors that they were allowed to explore for two hours. They measured brain levels of a protein known as gamma-H2A.X, which accumulates when breaks occur in double-stranded molecules of DNA.

"DNA comes in double strands, and has the shape of a twisted ladder," said researcher Lennart Mucke, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and the University of California at San Francisco. "Breaks in one strand, in one rail of the ladder, occur quite frequently, but breaking both takes quite a bit of damage and, in the brain, was thought to happen mostly in the context of disease." [10 Odd Facts About the Brain]

Unexpectedly, the researchers found such breaks also happened in the neurons of perfectly healthy mice, with up to six times more breaks in the neurons of explorer mice than in mice that remained in their home cages.

"Breaks of double strands of DNA seem to be a part of normal healthy brain activity," Mucke told LiveScience.

These DNA breaks occurred in various brain regions, especially in the dentate gyrus, an area necessary for spatial memory.

"It is both novel and intriguing, [the] team's finding that the accumulation and repair of DSBs [double-strand breaks] may be part of normal learning," said neuroscientist Fred Gage, of the Salk Institute, who did not take part in this study.

Mystery of DNA breaks

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Normal Brain Activity Linked to DNA Damage

A Brooklyn man accused of shooting an Italian tourist has been tied to the crime by DNA found on the gun used in the shooting and a blue Yankee cap he left behind, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

Career criminal Tyron Lovick, 37, snatched a necklace worn by Eleonora Giuliani, 29, and then blasted Luciano Giuliani, 62, in the stomach after the brave father grabbed him on a Fort Greene Street in May 2012, prosecutors charge.

The gun and the hat definitely match the defendant, said the law-enforcement source. Its a solid case.

Eleonora said she expected the DNA evidence to match up with Lovick.

Im very glad they found the DNA, Eleonora said. I hope hes going to get a bigger sentence.

Lovick, who has been charged with multiple counts of assault and robbery, has 12 prior arrests.

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DNA , Yankee cap link thug to tourist’s shooting

LONDON and HILDEN, Germany, March 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

A new DNA test launched today cuts the time it takes to find horsemeat in food from two days to less than four hours. The process was developed by QIAGEN, the world's leading provider of molecular sample and assay technologies.

The new testing method can detect in real time even minute traces of horsemeat (

"Current and previous scandals reveal a fundamental flaw in Europe's food surveillance systems. The consumer is asking for rules and testing standards that ensure our food contains what it says on the label. Only such tests can ensure that the economic future of Europe's farmers and food industry will not be jeopardised by a few rogue traders," said Dr. Dietrich Hauffe, Senior Vice President and Head of Life Sciences at QIAGEN. "A regulatory framework with a comprehensive and standardised testing regime will benefit grocery shoppers, food producers, retailers and testing service providers."

There are currently only limited rules in the European Union on how to test food ingredients for their authenticity. Furthermore, test outcomes differ from country to country and test lab to test lab. That's because the two most common test methods - ELISA tests for proteins, and end-point PCR tests for DNA - are cumbersome, lack common standards and, in the case of the ELISA test, don't always work for processed food.

In contrast, QIAGEN's solutions can be implemented across Europe to contribute to uniform testing standards. The testing system is based upon real-time PCR and incorporates proprietary technologies for the reliable and fast extraction of DNA, which is regarded as one of the most challenging steps in food testing. The new test complements QIAGEN's existing offering of more than 30 different tests for food safety, which is considered to be the broadest range of real-time PCR tests in the industry. QIAGEN technology also helps to diagnose a wide range of diseases, and is widely used in forensics, veterinary testing as well as life science and pharmaceutical research.

A range of images of the QIAGEN Horsemeat testing process can be found here: http://www.qiagen.com/About-Us/Press-and-Media/Photo-Archive/

PCR test: Polymerase chain reaction, a method of producing multiple copies of specific DNA and RNA sequences for detection and evaluation. PCR is one of the most frequently used techniques in many areas of basic and applied research, from forensics and medical diagnostics to food testing. QIAGEN offers several PCR technologies and a proprietary PCR detection platform.

Elisa test: The Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assaytest uses antibodies and colour changes to identify proteins or other substances in liquid or wet samples.

About QIAGEN

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New DNA Test Cuts Time to Find Horsemeat in Food from Two Days to Less than Four Hours

A painting in the Olduvai Gorge Museum, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania.

Some time in humanitys past, a small group of Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa before spreading out to every possible corner of the Earth. All the women of that group carried DNA inherited from just one woman, commonly known as mitochondrial Eve, whose DNA was inherited by all humans alive today. But the exact timing of this migration is not clear, and it has sparked debate among geneticists. Now, new research published in Current Biology may help calm both sides.

Studies of evolutionary events often involve the use of molecular clocks based on changes in DNA that accumulate over time. To accurately calibrate a clock, it helps to have a measure of the rate of mutations.

In 2012, UK Researchers used a method of analysis that involves DNA from the nucleus of present day humans. Armed with data from parents and their offspring, they estimated a new, much lower rate of DNA mutation. Based on their results, it would seem that human DNA may change much more slowly than was previously thought. The slow mutation rate puts the date of human migration out of Africa at somewhere between 90,000 and 130,000 years ago.

"This was very surprising," says Alissa Mittnik, a researcher at the University of Tbingen in Germany. "It contradicts what we know from fossil studies."

Those fossil studies have used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is easily preserved in old fossils, to estimate the mutation rate. The mutation rate was then used to calibrate events in humanitys past.

This data spills into other areas of research. For example, when combined with evolutionary models, this information can help predict which humans were able to build the various things that have been dug up by archaeologists. Carbon dating can give the precise age of the objects, but depending on the mutation rates, the species that made and used the object could be, for instance, modern humans or the Neanderthals.

In Current Biology, Mittnik and her colleagues report a new mutation rate. This rate may help researchers find a middle ground on the period when the African migration happened.

Their estimate relies on mtDNA too, but they claim it is much more reliable, in part because it uses mtDNA from ten different fossils, ranging from 700 to 40,000 years old. The new estimated rate is higher than the UK researchers got using nuclear DNA, but lower than older estimates of mtDNA studies. The lower rates reported by UK researchers, Mittnik says, could be because of their use of too stringent filterstheir analysis missed out on mutations that might have actually occurred (technically called false negatives).

Mittnik admits that, if it were possible, she would have studied nuclear DNA of fossils. That is because mtDNA only has 37 of the roughly 20,000 human genesthe rest are in nuclear DNA. But each cell has only two copies of nuclear DNA. Whereas it has hundreds of copies of mtDNA because it has many mitochondria in each cell, and each of them have multiple copies of the mtDNA. This makes it much harder to study nuclear DNA from fossil remains.

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Fossil DNA used to reset humanity’s clock